The future of digital currencies in Russia remained uncertain for most of 2016, but recent comments by the Olga Skorobogatova, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia, have shed some light on how Russian financial regulators feel about cryptocurrencies.

In an interview at the 2017 Gaidar Forum, Skorobogatova told the press that there are no plans to impose any bans on the usage of Bitcoin within the Russian Federation at the present time:

“As to Bitcoin, which is a private currency, it has became clear that things are not as simple and as it is written in books and magazines. The position of the regulatory agencies is that we would not like to specifically prohibit it, but we would like to first understand it, and then build a regulatory framework.”

Skorobogatova’s remarks are in sharp contrast to other Russian officials like Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev, who has made repeated attempts over the last two years to pass legislation that would impose stiff prison sentences on bitcoin users within Russia.

But despite the opposition from some regulators, bitcoin usage and popularity within the Russian Federation has grown substantially in 2016. More recently, St. Petersburg-based fitness chain, NanoFitness, began accepting the digital currency at several of their fitness studios in St. Petersburg and Tyumen.

Bitcoin sign posted at the door of NanoFitness

And in December, 2016, Russian presidential candidate and fierce Putin critic, Alexey Navalny, started accepting bitcoin donations - in addition to PayPal and Yandex.Money - for his campaign in the 2018 election. As of today, Navalny’s bitcoin donation address has received approximately 22.6 BTC ($18,758/1,117,976.8 Russian rubles) in donations.

Leonid Volkov, who heads Navalny's presidential campaign, said in a tweet that bitcoin donations represent 15% of all donations received so far.

It is notable that financial authorities are moving to establish the legal status and financial regulation of Bitcoin, and hence cryptocurrencies in general. The general move is to regulate tax status, exchange requirements, and usage. Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange does not appear to be a concern. However, the drastic hyping of Bitcoin, the collapse of exchanges in the past, and the evident manipulation of the markets for cryptocurrencies has drawn concern, both from regulatory authorities and from those who have lost money in the markets.

Additionally, the wave of Initial Coin Offerings of recent months, and the use of cryptocurrencies to raise capital for investment is drawing concern. One recent coin offering I saw detailed on CryptoCoinTalk.com was a scheme to raise capital for property investment through the selling of "tokens" for fiat, so that the fiat could capitalise a company that in turn would use the money to buy commercial property. While I am sure that the "developers" had good intentions, I can see a whole bunch of legal issues arising.